Saul Rose: 'Firing the War Horse band was shit. They shouldn't have done it'

Saul Rose knows a thing or two about War Horse. He played Songman in the West End show for a year starting in 2011, which was the year it came out as a movie. But more than that... As a folk musician he's known and much loved as one-third of Faustus, for Whapweasel, as Eliza Carthy's musical foil in the Kings of Calicutt and now as James Delarre's other half, kind of.

For ages I thought he was in Bellowhead because the first time I saw them live he was depping for John Spiers.

"He was off being a daddy," nods Rose, referring to Spiers' paternity leave.

It's a Tube-stricken evening in Camden and Rose & Delarre are playing at The Green Note to a handful of delighted diehards who are blase about their chances of getting home. What I want to know is what Rose thinks about events at the National Theatre, whose management recently, somewhat thuggishly, sacked the entire band from War Horse? 

"I think the problem ultimately was that they were musicians, rather than actors," said Rose. "They have the Musicians Union and their pay scale is different. When War Horse was originally commissioned it was only supposed to run for a short while. But then it went to the West End and is still running six or seven years later.

"The cast's deal was worked out on the basis that it was a three month run. But the same five musicians are still there after all that time later and their wages... It's why I'm a member of the Musicians' Union and not Equity."

When Rose was in War Horse he was a member of the cast who played music, rather than a member of the band. Do you have any idea how the musicians are, I ask?

"I should think they are feeling ever so slightly relieved," he said thoughtfully. "I'm just saying it's possible... because to play the same thing eight times a week for seven years takes some doing. I couldn't do it.

"What really appalls me, though, is that" whatever that judge said "those musicians are an integral part of the play. I sometimes worry about the idea of authenticity, but they had been in the show from the beginning and there was an authenticity to that. Audiences that see it with recorded music are being short changed and I think the play will suffer as a result...

"I'm not expecting to go back into War Horse," he grinned.

Probably just as well...

"I did a year and that's fine for me, that's plenty. It's not because I wouldn't do theatre again. I might. But I really had to put everything on hold as a musician for that year and it was hard.

"Maybe the audience numbers are dwindling now, finally?" he suggested

Well, it doesn't really matter, does it? War Horse has been the biggest financial success the National Theatre has ever had. There can't be any excuse for this kind of behaviour over money, can there? So what was it like, being in that show?

"It was amazing. One of the best years of my life. You know when you get a group of ten people there is always likely to be someone who is idiot?"

OK.

"Well, we had a cast of 35 and everyone was amazing. No idiots. They were all so generous to me, as someone who didn't really know anything about acting. I got to dress up as a colonel in one of the roles they had me play, and bark orders. And there was one scene"...

There may have been some ordnance going off like nostalgia at the back of Rose's mind...

"... where every time I did a back flip Malcolm, one of the other guys in the cast, would give me a fiver. I tell you what I missed though... There are certain parts of that show when the Songman is allowed to interact with the audience. And in that role you get to do it more than anyone else. But even so... it wasn't much. It was like there was a wall up between the actors and audience most of the time."

And I guess having recorded music can only exacerbate that. What about John Tams (who wrote the original music for War Horse)? I tried to get in touch with him about this business with the band and the union but he appears, uncharacteristically and despite his apparent political views, to have gone to ground on the subject. He didn't return my messages.

"Ah, Tams... Being the Songman in War Horse was a little bit like depping for him on a permanent basis. Ordinarily I like to mould a song to my way of speaking but Tams came in one day to the theatre and told me 'They've been through enough sieves already'."

That made me laugh because it reminded me very much of the story Tams tells about Richard Curtis on the set of War Horse. It's true, then, that what goes around comes around...

There was a bit more chatter. Rose and Delarre's CD wasn't out in time for their tour, which is a shame though you can pre-order one here. As well as the Tube strike they were also in competition that evening with an album launch at Cecil Sharp House, although judging by the tide of people sweeping down Parkway at 9.25pm (the strike was due to start at 9.30) they weren't quite so blase about getting home. Rose and Delarre had the cooler audience. Just saying... The gig was fantastic. And apparently they haven't got much lined up festival-wise this summer, so are open to suggestions.

At the end of the evening Rose had had a good long time to think about the subject under discussion, and summed it up thus: "Firing the War Horse band was shit. They shouldn't have done it."

There is a Musicians Union petition here that you can sign if you agree with him, asking for the musicians to be reinstated. There are about 6,500 signatures so far.

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American bloke runs off with Steve Knightley's guitar

More than halfway through his set for the Green Note at The Old Queen's Head on Monday night, Richard Shindell said: "I would like to thank Steve Knightley for the loan of his guitar. He was supposed to bring my CDs from his shed to my gig in Wiltshire yesterday: he was supposed to bring them to the festival that I came from this morning.

"And he didn't.

"And he felt so badly about it that I felt bad for him for feeling so bad. We both felt very bad.

"So I gave him the opportunity to redeem himself. I said 'lend me your guitar for two weeks'."

Shindell, you see, lives in Argentina and for some reason or other had not brought an acoustic guitar with him despite it being his instrument of choice.

"And Steve said," with rising intonation, as one pleading for it not to be the case, "'Really?'

"I got a text message from Steve Knightley just before I came on stage. I was afraid it would say something like 'Don't use my guitar tonight'.

"So I didn't read it."

Ha!

* The pictures on this blog were taken by the very talented David Firn, who could be reached here, if you were interested in his work.

* Richard Shindell pays for Tardis to orbit the Earth

* If you thought these posts were good you might also enjoy this interview with Shindell I made earlier.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Hatful of Rain and The Hobbit himself, Martin Freeman

Jamie Freeman had just finished his set supporting Hatful of Rain at the Green Note, and there was quite a lot I wanted to ask really: what with him and his wife, Stevie, running the Union Music Store on Lewes, which is a shop - the kind that people travel to visit - and a record label. Hatful of Rain's record label, in fact.

Then I noticed with a rather uncool start, that there was an extremely famous actor standing at the bar, deep in conversation and wearing a tweedy jacket.

This is always a tricky moment for me. Like some kind of partly reformed junky, I used to work on several newspaper diary columns and am therefore potentially completely shameless about pestering people I've only seen on TV in pursuit of a funny anecdote. It's a habit I'm trying to wean myself off, the better to reintegrate myself back into civilised society. So I coped with the increased heart rate by thinking something along the lines of "Sherlock Holmes, The Office, national treasure, The Hobbit... Oh fuckety fuck. What's his name...?"

"That's my brother, Martin," said Jamie, helpfully.

Sorry for staring. That must be weird. Does he have hairy feet like a Hobbit? (Perhaps I was gabbling slightly.) Being his brother, I suppose you'd probably know...

He replied that veiny feet ran in the family. "Like a map of south London."

Anyway, that was sufficiently bizarre to satisfy my Pavlovian craving for celebrity, especially as I was assured that Martin Freeman wasn't a folky. "More of a soul boy really." Also he was having a night off from being famous.

Anyhow.

Hatful of Rain were marvellous. I had an inkling they might be after I tried to go and see them last Thursday at the Halfmoon in Putney but was unable to hear them properly over a shouty crowd that was there - unaccountably - mainly to see someone else. I'll save that story for another time...

Lyrically they're very strong, as you might expect from a band that chose such an arresting name. Seeing them mentioned on Facebook, a friend suggested that it could be a tribute to Del Amitri, which didn't sound very likely to me, but did have the unintended effect of eliciting the truth from Philip the bass player: it's from a Tom Waits song, which is obviously much cooler.

Chloe, the singer and lyricist, has an iconoclastic turn of mind, as well as a day job as a midwife. The latter led to a great story about one of the other band members phoning during working hours only to be told: "I'm sorry, I can't talk now. I'm practising mending perineal tears on a fake vagina." There was nothing about this gig that wasn't memorable.

When I say iconoclastic, I'm thinking of the bold taste in frocks...

(Thanks to Alex Pape for forwarding this picture, which is far better than anything I could wrangle out of my camera phone.)

... also the knack of turning a great phrase. A good way to make a bad man worse jumped out and stayed out.

And then there are the songs that sound as if they're just waiting to be covered.

But they also have a knack of picking excellent covers themselves. So we had Willin' by Little Feat, Gillian Welch's Caleb and White Freightliner by Townes Van Zandt.

All in all I can't recommend this lot highly enough. They're extremely classy and have excellent back-up in the form of Union Music Store. It was Jamie and Stevie Freeman who made the video for Way up on the Hill (top) that caught Bob Harris's eye. And I had a really interesting conversation with Stevie afterwards about how people are better at listening to things when they're also watching something, that led me to wonder again about the role that graphic design plays in the music industry these days. It's Jamie's background and it also came up in relation to Keston Cobblers Club the other day.

By the way, Amanda Abbington, who stars in the video for the lovely Exit Song (directly above), is a professional actress and Martin Freeman's girlfriend.

And inevitably, as I headed off towards Camden Tube station a bus sailed past wearing a big advert for The Hobbit that took the form of Martin Freeman's face. And, yes, it was heading for south London.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Southern Tenant Folk Union goes a bit Dexter

Watching the Southern Tenant Folk Union launch their fifth album on the Green Note's tiny stage on Thursday brought to mind a world record attempt to fit the most people into a phone booth. Every time I thought I'd finished counting them, another head - or a banjo - would would pop into view from the back so its owner could take their turn at the single microphone.

It could have been a piece of physical theatre: guitar necks were foisted in the air, the better for the sound to reach the mike, vocalists moved nearer or farther away depending on how loud they needed to be and there looked to be an unwavering awareness of where everyone else was, so they could all move around each other. The lack of space made them a single organism and I didn't see anyone bump into anyone else.

They've also got a look. They had three beardy young men wearing suits that made them look like someone's ancestors in the Green Note's sepia light. Proper old-timey. I kept expecting them to break into Man of Constant Sorrow.

They didn't, though, partly because they write all their own material.

The new album, Hello Cold Goodbye Sun, is surprisingly contemporary in its preoccupations. After being described as "sawdust kickers" by an approving Guardian, they've applied their bluegrassy folk sound to a collection of songs described as "modern horror", as if True Blood, Twilight and Dexter had collided with Deadwood, Deliverance and Lars Von Triers' recent film about the end of the world, Melancholy, in such a way that the only thing left to do was sing about it. Sawdust, after all, is often used to soak up blood.

They began with a song preoccupied, according to the band's remaining founder member Pat McGarvey, by the imagery of JG Ballard's Crash, a novel which eroticises car accidents in a way that - as a former nurse - I always thought was odd. I mean, when you're recovering from traumatic injuries the pain will usually kill eroticism and if it doesn't then the opiates will. But hey... it's fiction. More importantly, the song worked.

Most hilarious intro of the evening went to Jed Milroy, owner of an amazing head of curly hair that he likes to shake about, for his explanation about how he came to write a macabre piece about a real Scottish kayacking trip that ended badly. "They all do," chimed in an audience member to much hilarity. And so we were treated to the image of a one-handed man gaffer-taping a paddle to his arm before finding a weird, Deliverance-y family (Duelling Banjos works well with this on several levels) on a causeway, refusing to admit that the tide was lapping their ankles or even that Milroy was there.

I don't know this band very well and stupidly managed to leave without an album. But they were gripping and there were tunes they played that I urgently need to hear again. OK, so the ambitious vocal harmonies were sometimes a little wonky. But I guess that's partly a function of working with new material.

In their greatest hits at the end - after they'd played the new album from end to end - they included a setting of Yeats's powerfully unusual poem An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.

I was struck by it because I know The Waterboys' version from their recent and rather wonderful album, An Appointment with Mr Yeats.

The poem is one of the greats. And Southern Tenant Folk Union really aren't bad either.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Josienne, Ben, Sam and Hannah go vintage at the Green Note

At a time where the young are often jobless and as a result the golden "olden days" telescope backwards from the 1980s, everything retro and handmade has recently grown an undeserved glamour. This has got to be a good thing for the Green Note in Camden, where the same red velvet curtains appear to have been hanging for at least the past thirty years, their folds retaining the flavours of delicious vegetarian meals long eaten and - if you listen carefully - pockets of music from the folk dimension linger, to be emitted in faintly fluorescing puffs as the lights dim.

The place has a kind of magic.

My friend David Firn came along with his camera to try and capture some of it the other night, when Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker supported Sam Sweeney and Hannah James. He previously did the same at The Old Queen's Head for O'Hooley and Tidow and Bella Hardy, with some success, I think.

Ben jumped up early to re-tune his guitars again, producing nods of agreement between Josienne and Michelle, Ben's girlfriend, that this was a symptom of his, um, fastidiousness when it comes to anything with strings.

Josienne (above) and Ben had tailored their set to the idea that they were at a folk club, which on the one hand meant that they gave a reverence to the standards. We got Silver Dagger - beloved of folky fathers everywhere for the line "My daddy is a handsome devil" - Green Grows the Laurel and an encore of Who Knows Were the Time Goes? On the other hand, they've just started doing a version of Dolly Parton's Jolene but left it off the list for being insufficiently trad, which made me droop a little with disappointment.

A good song is a good song, whatever accent it comes wrapped in. You can hear their stunning recorded version here.

That's Josienne doing her thing.

By the way, if you carry on down that Soundcloud playlist, you may well find that the two of them have written a superb country song called Homemade Heartache. It's been covered several times already, despite being only a year old.

Sam Sweeney and Hannah James had driven down from Sheffield for the gig.

These two are only in their late twenties but have a timelessness about them. Sam is the multi-instrumentalist whose wild fiddling kicks off Bellowhead's New York Girls so that the hairs stand up on the back of your neck (complete there with a ludicrous introduction by Jools Holland, also a classic of its kind). And Hannah, whose stately accordian and unerringly tuneful voice are set off by the precision and muscularity of her clogging. 

There is an attractively closed quality to her: she has a stage presence like a tiny fist. It's as if the two of them were reincarnated from somewhere where all the light is sepier and dray horses still rule the cobbles. And I know it's not Sheffield because I was there recently...

Congratulations on your engagement to a long-haired forest ranger, Hannah.

He was at the back, near the bar.

And there's the set list, which saves me the trouble of running through it. Something really unusual about Sam and Hannah's sound is that sometimes it's really hard telling the accordian part from the  fiddle as they wrap around each other, which is surprising when you think how unalike the two instruments are.

Things we learned during the course of the evening included that there is a place near Shrewsbury where the bunting is knitted (Woolverhampton?), Hannah has a diary with a picture of Alan Titchmarsh on the front, and that until Sam took part in something called Men on the Fiddle recently, no one had ever referred to him within his hearing as "a man".

Other reminders of his youthfulness included that when he was growing up he believed the term "primadona" referred to anything that had taken place before the advent of Madonna, the singer.

I know.

He also speaks good French and once, we were told, introduced a gig entirely in that language, which seemed to go well, right up to he point at which it turned out that the word for "ring" is easy to confuse with the word for "sheep". Clarification arrived in the form of 600 French-speaking people baa'ing at him.

This gig was wonderful, there was no baa'ing this time and if you missed it the good news is that Sam and Hannah have been invited back to the Green Note early next year. Get in.

* You can check out the Green Note's forthcoming gigs here. Ben and Josienne are playing there again on October 15.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook news feed you could *like* its Facebook page. Or you could follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley